PCCHIPS M789CLU-2000 platform on VIA C3 processor

For many years already, all the world's computer society has been keeping a constant eye at the "battle" between the two processor giants - Intel and AMD. While boiling in these endless arguments, disputes and discussions about "who is the best?", we often forget about other players on the processor market - in particular, products by VIA Technologies, Inc.

In terms of the processor criteria, VIA has not been around for on the market, but even for that time the company has offered a number of processors with varied characteristics, performance, and prices. According to the original positioning of first VIA C3 (it's just how these processors are called), they were aimed at inexpensive office machines, and the recent visit of Richard Brown, VIA's marketing vice president to Russia has proved that. The company's official representative declared that it is still in the plans of VIA to create inexpensive small-sized PCs aimed primarily at office programs and Internet surfing. Also, one of VIA's tasks is participation in the program to increase the number of Internet users to 1 billion.

Officially, the project is dubbed PC-1 and as you can guess it is aimed at sales of available PCs in countries like India, China, Brazil, and other developing countries. Clearly, it is unreasonable and unrealistic to promote high-performance (and thus high-priced) solutions in countries of low public incomes. That is why VIA is creating affordable platforms based on proprietary chipsets including integrated video, audio, and.. however strange that may sound - the processor. The major trumps of such PC is of course the small size, not too high but sufficient performance which is automatically compensated for by low heat emission and power consumption, and of course low price. At the same time, VIA computers are adapted for operating in unstable power transmission lines, which allows using the platform even in villages and small settlements.

One of the most promising trends and hopes of VIA is the future processor C7 of which the company expects a subdual of the entry-level PC niche. Among the merits of its architecture is the full compatibility to x86 standards (and thus to a large number of PCs), support for the key instruction sets, and again - low heat emission and small power consumption.

For now, we are still waiting for the official release of the new processor and hope that the company's plans come true and now we are coming back to what we started the review with - the VIA C3 processor.

As is known, there is a number of VIA C3 processor versions on the market, or cores underlying it. The company's earlier developments are based on the Samuel 2 core and made following the 0.13 mk process technology. The latest announced VIA C3 Samuel 2 processor offered 800 clock speed with 13W maximum heat emission, and communication with the chipset was effected using 133 MHz bus licensed from Intel and similar to Pentium III.

By the end of 2003, VIA migrated C3 to the new Nehemiah core whose major advantages became the increased (from 64 to 256 Kb) L2 cache size, the pipeline extended from 12 to 17 stages, support for MMX and SIMD stream instructions processing block, as well as increased frequency potentials - it is now as high as 1.4 GHz. As regards the FPU unit in charge of the arithmetic operations, its lack on C3 Samuel 2 resulted in almost a software implementation of all the SSE-like and multimedia instructions (with the relevant run speed), whereas in the Nehemiah core it started running at the processor frequency.

VIA has no plans to further develop the C3 platform (if we disregard the minor remakes and migration of the IBM 0.11 mk process technology using SOI), but anyway the company is not yet going to phase out the production, to which there is a number of reasons. First, the start of VIA C7 processor production has been planned for the next year, and secondly, VIA has more revolutionary projects (like the north and south bridges positioned on the same chip with the processor) which also require funding. Departure from the market of processors (even for a year) will mean for VIA a loss of one of the revenue items, which will have a negative effect on the pace of announcement of novelties not standing out with speed...

But let's not talk about the sad. In the end, VIA currently has the reliable C3 processor which is capable of coping with any office task as well as multimedia in the part of viewing films and listening to music. In fact, the latter applies more to Ñ3 on the Nehemiah core because C3 Samuel 2, strongly cut-down in the "arithmetic", support for multimedia instruction sets and clock speed, is hardly able handling DivX films. However inadequate and unusual that sounds, but today we are reviewing this processor in detail on the example of PCCHIPS M789CLU-2000 motherboard built on the CLE266 chipset with the integrated Ñ3 2000+ processor (which is the same C3 Samuel 2 800 MHz).

But before we get round to the specifications of the board, we'd like to tell a few words on the chipset combination CLE266 with the south bridge VT8235.

The number "266" in the chipset name is not accidental - it shows the standard of maximum supported DDR memory. In this case, it is rather old DDR PC2100 memory.

As you may have noticed, not only does the CLE266 chipset allow installing VIA processors, it is also compatible to Intel Pentium III/Celeron made in the Socket 370 package.

The specific feature of the north bridge CLE266 is in the integrated graphics having the nice name UniChrome Pro developed by S3 Graphics. The results demonstrated by it at 3D applications can be hardly called "performance", so VIA restricts the characteristics of its offspring to "integrated graphic core of good 2D image quality". Just imagine that - merely a single pixel pipeline with two TMU hardly favors to producing good results even at games of '98 and '99. In fact, nobody has ever expected that from integrated graphics.

The south bridge VIA VT8235 allows enabling two IDE channels, which makes it possible to plug in up to four PATA devices without support for RAID functionality. In all the other respects, the options of VT8235 are middling and customary - 6 USB ports, 5.1-channel audio, and a modem.

Nevertheless, the CLE266 chipset has some spice - the hardware implementation of a MPEG2 accelerator designed to assist the processor in decoding DVD films. Actually, our C3 Samuel 2 800MHz doesn't care about this feature at all since it is simply unable to cope with such load.

Now we'd better move on to reviewing the capabilities of the PCCHIPS M789CLU-2000 motherboard...

The model is equipped to the minimum - there was nothing else apart from two cables, user's guide, disk and a cap.

Design and hardware capabilities

The PCCHIPS M789CLU-2000 motherboard is made on red textolyte and is of the FlexATX form-factor. The board's dimensions are so minor that are comparable to a textbook and a school notebook. Of course, that offers a great advantage - the platform can be fitted even inside the smallest Flex(Micro)ATX housings today, and with a bit of imagination and crafting (e.g. order a project in a modding studio) you very likely to build some sort of a barebone system.

Despite the size, the motherboard is fastened with six bolts like many ATX boards.

The board is shipped with a preinstalled VIA C3 processor on the Samuel 2 core. Even though the CLE266 chipset does not allow operating with Nehemiah-based models, it is impossible to replace the processor because it is deadly welded into the board itself, and on top of it there is a small cooler with a very thin (2 mm) radiator. The rotational speed of the cooler's impeller is 5000 rpm, and the noise level is not too high - about 20-25 dB. But what about the temperature? We must calm you down - everything is OK with the temperature. We wondered how such a tiny cooler unable to cope with the modern chipsets by Intel and NVIDIA could cool the processor? It turned out it can do a good job of that - even under heavy load the C3 2000+ temperature was within 35-40 degrees. Here they are - the 13W TDP! We'd also like to note that the air flow generated is strong enough, which allows cooling both the north bridge and the cooling system.

As regards the processor itself, its capabilities are scanty as we noted above. That is because of the small 64K L2 cache, low clock speed, and most importantly, it is merely a partial implementation of the MMX technology and a compete lack of support for SSE instructions because of disputes between VIA and Intel that time. For a long time, the companies failed to come to an agreement regarding cross-licensing Intel's system bus since VIA after acquiring S3 Graphics assumed such a patent had been automatically presented (because S3 Graphics used to have one). On the other hand, VIA had nothing to quarrel with AMD about, so support for SSE-like 3DNow! instructions was implemented without an issue.

That time, VIA processors had a really bad time because programs optimized for SSE refused to run without it, or if they did work, that was awful. Among the programs was DivX video decoding popular enough among the great number of users.

But every situation has a way out, so the solution was found - that was either a full migration to OS Linux or the banal search for a 3DNow!-optimized player, which we tried to do. After a long search for the needed program we did find it - it is Crystal Player. The player was developed with the idea of squeezing the most out of the processor and making a weak machine somehow cope with DivX films. Having disabled the image codec filtering, which somehow deteriorated the quality, we anyway succeeded more or less comfortable viewing with some minor time-shifts in complex scenes.

This is what CPU-Z v.1.3.0 tells about the processor. Note that the utility misreads the L2 cache size.

The graphic core integrated into the graphic core did not add much to CLE266 heat emission, so the bridge easily gets by with a tiny radiator.

The IDE-connectors are positioned conveniently over the board's edge: the first channel is colored blue, the second is white.

In parallel to the IDE-connectors there are DIMM slots for DDR PC1600/PC2100 184-pin memory modules. Of note is that memory of this type has mainly gone off the retail shelves by now, so use of PC3200 is not an issue. In our case, Hynix DDR400 on D43 series chips ran trouble-free at 133MHz (PC2100).

It is nice to see the color coding of the F-panel. Nearby, there is the BIOS and system monitoring chip (by the way, the diligent Chinese accidentally mixed up the stickers, so the Winbond controller has an AMI BIOS sticker, and the BIOS chip is labeled Winbond. respectively).

As the audio codec, the manufacturer selected C-Media's CMI9761A. Apart from support for 5.1-channel acoustics, there is nothing else to say about the acoustics. The sound is standard - no induction or interference was noticed.

The board uses a VIA VT6103 LAN controller of 100 Mbit/s maximum data transmission speed.

The processor's power scheme uses a 1-phase scheme and includes four 3300 mkF with some more capacitors of smaller capacitance.

However strange that seems, the rear panel of the ports is standard - only the second COM-ports has been replaced with a VGA-connector.

BIOS capabilities

PCCHIPS M789CLU-2000 uses the AMI BIOS version. The firmware offers scanty options, so we note it straight that the board is absolutely free of any overclocking tools.

Let's look through the main sections

The first section - Standard SMOS Setup - is traditionally responsible for the system settings like system time, disk management, as well as setting up IDE-devices. Implementation of the latter feature is made in a somehow outdated form - in particular, the user has two options - either fix detected PATA devices to a certain data channel and skip the stage of detecting such when the board undergoes the POST checkup, or use the Auto mode when the BIOS automatically identifies ParallelATA hard disks, CD/DVD-ROM or other compatible equipment upon reboot/power-on.

The Advanced Setup section, apart from choosing the boot devices, also includes memory latency timings, but of all the available parameters, only the CAS# Latency and DDR Bank Interleave can be changed only.

Then we move on to the PCI/ Plug and Play Setup section which gathers the settings of the integrated graphics core. It includes the possibility to choose the memory type allocated for the integrated graphics (16,32, or 64 MB), as well as video devices which should be addressed first upon the PC power-on.

Finally, in the Feature Setup section you can set up integrated controllers, in particular, audio, LAN, and modem (the latter was missing on the board).

Performance and conclusions

As we already noted in the middle of the article, the results demonstrated by VIA C3 Samuel 2 and CLE266 can hardly be called performance, because even with all the possible optimization of the operating system and installed new drivers, the produced figures did not differ much from those in Pentium MMX tests. For a visual example, we chose a few random configurations and compared their readings with the results demonstrated by our today's "probationers".

But for a start we traditionally bring in the test bench configuration:

• CPU/Video/MoBo: VIA C3 2000+/UniChrome Pro/PCCHIPS M789CLU-2000;
• Memory: 1x512 MB DDR400@266 Hynix on D43 chips;
• HDD: WD 80GB PATA;
• PS: PowerMan 300W;
• MS Windows XP SP2.

So, here are tests from the SiSoftware Sandra 2005 benchmarking suite.

To make the comparison as impartial as possible, we bring in the memory subsystem test results.

Finally, we tried the system with Futuremark 3DMark 2001 SE. The results are lamentable - only 348 marks was achieved, and the average result for all the game scenes rarely exceeded 1-2 FPS, sometimes the counter showed 0 FPS.

Well, the figures are self-explanatory, which is no wonder because the architecture of the processor is extremely outdated. At the same time, we felt absolutely comfortable in all office applications like MS Office 2003, Abobe Photoshop, PROMT XT, Opera, The Bat!, and Winamp…

As was already said, with Crystal Player were able to watch films and clips and even play the popular Solitaire in between ... What else is needed to the office computer? Perhaps, at that the list could be finished of course if the boss is not a confirmed gamer into killing monsters after work with colleagues, but that is already a different story...

In fact, it is not mandatory to use the VIA C3 platform as the main computer. The small size and quiet operation favors to setting up a small home-based file server aimed at storing collections of films, music, game etc, as well as a portable car-based PC. A few years ago, they described a method of building a card-based PC for AUDI A6. The owner replaced the nominal computer system with the C3 platform, then not only upgraded the functionalities of the car to as high as A8 and even substantially improved the navigation capabilities of the car, and multimedia of course.

The list of C3 platform application can't be restricted by that - add some imagination and the so-called "thin client" may turn into your small assistant both in business and at home...